We speculate software and data migration are frequently urged
by IT infrastructure modernization needs (emergencies would it be more precise
to say perhaps) at the enterprise level which often are nearly related with platform
obsolescence and associated maintenance costs. A possibly even more appreciable
benefit might be the need of integration between heterogeneous information
systems and data bases, the need of being able to easily connect information
sources, to create access ports to facilitate extraction and derivation of
knowledge from such sources helping at the management level at the decision-support
systems level in a more natural and easy way. In other words, the real value of
modernization would be to support BI-like strata pointing -for sure- to a
better CRM platform among others. We feel migration is probably not perceived as
a transitory goal, more as a mean, so the added-value might lie outside possibly hidden
with respect to the whole migration effort per se. It seems to me that the vertical
road which leads from software migration and modernization until reaching BI-end-user
is perceived as a too long one, one that is hard to appreciate at first sight
at the management level. My question to myself would be whether that has to be
so. Shouldn’t migration tools and message be pointing as layers enablers for
the BI layer, in a more directly way. And if the answer is yes we should be
asking ourselves how such migration tools can be adapted for closing the gap.